


Extraction

by mightbeanasshole



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Walt/Jesse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 02:17:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6496903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a thousand reasons to say no: Jesse’s age, his profession, his extracurricular habits, the possibility that he was only interested because he felt like he needed to pay Saul back for being kind -- and his snarling, dangerous ex who they’d both still have to deal with after that.</p><p>And there were a million reasons to say yes: the ease of their conversation, the way Jesse’s laugh sucked the air right out of his throat, the deep impulse that seemed to flood Saul’s brain with the desire to take care of Jesse in any way that he needed, to do anything to mitigate the disasters that seemed to rain down on him in a constant, torrential downpour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extraction

Saul lived for that moment before he made a mistake.

Maybe lived _in_ it.

Depended on how you’d like to frame things – and being an attorney was nothing if not knowing how to frame things _just right._

If he was feeling pessimistic, Saul would argue that his life could be plotted like a road trip map: drop a pin at each mistake he made and then connect the destinations with those shimmering moments just before them. Voila: a veritable continental trek of misadventure.

But if his glass happened to be half full at the time of reflection – and hey, he tried his damnedest to keep the glass half full at the very least – then the familiar haze of pre-mistake bliss was just another sweet, terrible type of moment in a life of myriad moments. Good, bad, and in between. Variety is the spice of life. Choose your euphemism and ride it into the sunset.

. . . 

That Tuesday afternoon bled with a slow trickle into evening as a particularly tricky settlement negotiation sprawled out and out and out, civility unraveling at both ends until clients and attorneys alike were dragging hands down their faces and letting loose audible sighs.

They gave up at 8.

Saul parted ways with his frustrated client, the man turning down his offer to buy them both a fast food dinner as a sort of consolation prize for making zero progress and wasting five ( _billable!_ ) hours of the man’s time that he’d most certainly never get back, even if at some point the other attorney extracted the stick from his ass long enough to settle.

Neither Saul nor his client could really tell if the offer of dinner was a complicated joke or not – but hell, Saul would certainly have laid down a few ten spots for the type of food that hemorrhaged grease until its container was translucent, as long as it meant watching his client duck into his car looking a little less dour. He would’ve even sprung for tacos. 

Saul desperately needed something to keep his mind occupied until it was late enough to sink into bed without spending even the first minute considering the encounter he’d had with Walt and Jesse that morning -- that last look Jesse had given him. 

He wanted something to fill up those hours, even if it was a greasy dinner with a client who probably hated him.

Yeah, life had really piled it on. Tuesday. Hell of a day.

. . .

“Shouldn’t we -- ah -- I mean we could _call him_ first, yeah?” 

Walt was already halfway out the door but he stopped long enough to turn and give Jesse one of those intensely familiar looks. 

One of the ones that all but shouted _I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer_. 

Did he, like, spend time practicing those in the mirror? Or did they just naturally come to him?

Walt turned without a word and continued on his path to the car. Jesse watched the shirt move over his back for a few steps before following behind. 

In different circumstances or maybe a year ago, the look would have sent Jesse scrambling backwards in a mental tailspin -- sent Jesse to go fumbling around inside his own head to come up with something to say to make his point stronger, some sort of half-apology, or even an insult he could fling if all else failed. 

But there was really no heat behind Walt’s look that morning. 

Still early enough and Walt had slept well enough to be in a neutral mood. 

(He didn’t really _do_ “good” moods anymore. Whatever. Neither did Jesse -- so it was fine.)

In lieu of pressing the point, Jesse flopped down into the passenger seat next to Walt and began to conduct a theoretical, silent conversation with the man behind the steering wheel. Walt eased them out of the apartment parking lot and on towards the highway.

Those looks -- the ones perfectly honed to take Jesse down a few notches -- had been so effective that Jesse found himself having fake, silent conversations a lot. 

Almost constantly when they were together. And they were almost always together lately.

He’d found that if he talked through whatever he wanted to say inside his own dome piece and never opened his mouth, he could usually follow Walt’s line of reasoning and spare himself the raised eyebrow, the slow blink that interrupted Jesse’s breathing and made him want to either disappear or reverse time.

It had saved him a lot of grief. _It helped them get along._ He did it more and more.

( _Had he treated Skyler like this? His own kid? Was it any different from the way he treated Jesse in high school?_ Jesse didn’t let his head go there if he could help it -- but sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, the question waited for his consideration in a dim corner. At least it was less grim than a lot of the other corners in Jesse’s head. Lesser of two evils and all that. The lesser of a dozen evils -- and mounting.) 

He probably talked to the Walt inside his head more often than the flesh-and-blood one. 

Hey, maybe the next time Walt left him, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be so anxious to scramble back to the guy or fill the hole he left with someone else. 

Considering… you know. Jesse had gotten a pretty good likeness going in his imagination.

So that morning the was no need for him to say anything, in the end. Jesse already knew.

_ Shouldn’t we call him?  _

_ I don’t call and **warn** people on my payroll, Jesse. Saul was careless -- and you know as well as I do there’s no room for that right now. Not during this... pivot. We need everyone lean and everything accurate until this thing is off the ground. So we’ll pay Saul a visit and we’ll talk through this thing.  _

Jesse managed an eye roll at the stand-in mental Mr. White. 

It was never simple with him -- even less so as they’d been negotiating the Vamonos purchase. Everything Saul had been doing behind the scenes had been keeping things running without a hitch. But it was almost like Walt _needed_ the people around him to fuck up sometimes.

Ouch. He was probably onto something there, actually.

Jesse tried not to think too hard about that, folding his arms across his chest and slumping against the car door. He was already in way too deep and it was only -- Jesse checked his phone -- shit, not even ten in the morning yet. Way _way_ too fucking early to be this deep inside his own head. 

If Walt were capable of real human conversation, maybe shit like this wouldn’t be such a problem. 

Jesse reached out and flipped the radio on, jabbing the preset button he set months ago for the least shitty ABQ station. It was tinny nu-metal that morning. Jesse turned it up to a reasonable volume level and watched for a reaction from Walt -- not trying to get a rise, just… needing some noise. 

One corner of Walt’s mouth curled up almost imperceptibly and his eyebrows raised in something like an involuntary twitch. But he didn’t shut it off. Maybe they’d end up having a passable day together -- even if they _were_ going to see Saul.

_ Can I wait in the car?  _ Jesse asked the theoretical Walt. 

That would definitely earn him a look. Jesse didn’t even have to talk that one through.

. . .

Saul bit down frustration as he ushered a new client out the office door. No, some small time slip-and-fall guy wasn’t going to be replacing the income he made off of the big boys of the meth business -- but it was infinitely less likely to find him a shallow grave in the desert, and taking the case didn’t mean trying to hack his way through a thicket of snarled vines and branches. 

And so he resented them when they showed up that morning unannounced and interrupting his busy day.

The new guy limped out with a business card, and Saul straightened his tie. 

“Send them in,” he buzzed through to Francesca. 

Walt led the way with a cool, inscrutable frown. Jesse was on his heels, always was these days, looking down at his shoes. Saul stood up from his desk to greet them, decidedly not looking at Jesse as he went boneless, collapsing down onto the couch like a frustrated kid taken along on an errand.

Which, all things considered, he _was._

“Would’ve cleared my schedule if I knew you two rays of sunshine were headed over,” Saul said, meeting Walt’s frown with a frown. “I suppose you lost my phone number?” 

Jesse snorted and shot Walt a pointed look. Something crackled between them that made Saul’s stomach churn -- as if simply seeing them together, knowing what he knew, hadn’t accomplished that much already.

Walt turned from Jesse, crossed the office, and for a moment Saul had to force himself not to flinch as the man postured up, just a few inches from his body. But then he slapped a file folder down onto Saul’s desk and took a few steps back.

“There are problems with Vamanos.” 

Saul rolled his eyes and picked up the folder. If he’d fucked up, Walt would want to drag this out as long and painfully as possible, like a teacher itching to give him detention. He scanned the documents inside the manilla folder, flipping quickly through. Liens, back taxes, some pages of a legal dispute from another state. Christ, OK, there _were_ problems with Vamanos. 

“Well, I’ll need to sit with these but… no, there’s nothing here I can’t fix, OK?” 

“No, _Saul_ ,” Walt said, shaping his mouth around the name like it had a bad taste. “Not _OK._ What am I paying you for, if not to catch things like this?” 

“Come on, Walt, you’ve bought a house before. You know transactions like this are a crapshoot -- even with all the cash in the world, there are always problems. I’ll put a rush on this, retrace my steps to make sure there are no other surprises, and we’ll get this thing done.” 

“You know I have better things to do than following behind you and cleaning up your mistakes --”

“Right, yes, a busy man,” Saul said, talking over Walt in a way he knew the man hated. “I got it -- I’m gonna get this thing done for you. The ASest of APs -- don’t gotta tell me twice.”

Walt wasn’t satisfied with the reassurances, though. Of course he wouldn’t be. He began to lecture Saul on all of his shortcomings, falling into the rough lilt that had become more and more familiar to Saul since they started working together. 

He only half-listened, throwing in grunts of acknowledgement and well-timed “You’re right”s as Walt talked. 

Jesse’s eyes were fixed on some point past the two of them, zoning out. It was incredible how much older he looked with his hair cropped close to his head and a few days’ scruff across his jaw. He’d stopped wearing the big hoodies -- and Saul realized that was probably Walt’s doing, with a little curl of disgust in his gut. Everything was understated and drab, an olive shirt under a thin gray jacket. The clothes, the hair -- they were different but that small frame hadn’t changed. 

Saul knew just how his arms could fit around the slim span of Jesse’s ribs. He knew just how his skin would feel, the precise way his chest would rise and fall in measured breaths if he were to cross in that moment and press a hand up against Jesse’s torso. It was a terrible knowledge to bear and it made his chest cavity threaten to collapse into itself. 

Jesse caught him looking. His expression came to life, then, eyebrows knitting a bit before his mouth went tight into an apologetic half-smile. It made Saul want to choke. It made him want to sucker punch the glasses off of Walt’s face. 

Instead, he bit down on his own smile and shook his head. 

. . .

The moment before a mistake.

Some moments lasted longer than others.

Some moments blossomed out into several nights and then they just kept blooming until the moment spanned more days than you could count on two hands (fewer than a fortnight, though, let’s not get crazy). 

They’re all… _moments_ right?

It was funny in retrospect -- not ha-ha funny, but the kind of funny that had him tracking the passage of time in how quickly the liquor drained out of the bottle on his kitchen counter. 

. . . 

_ “You’re sure, kid?” _

It was a year ago, maybe. Saul hadn’t kept track. 

Walt had stormed out of the office during an after-hours meeting where he’d flung insults at both of them and then -- shock of shocks -- told Jesse to shack up somewhere else for the night. Jesse’s expression had gone haywire at that, the anger draining out of eyes that were suddenly glossing over with tears as he watched Walt walk away. 

It was like the man’s absence sucked the air out of the room. It was abrupt and Jesse looked very small in that moment. He’d expected Jesse to meet Walt’s anger with anger, to spit out some insult, call Walt a bitch, ask Saul if he could even _believe_ that douchebag. 

He wanted that -- wanted to laugh with Jesse and tell him yeah, that asshole’s certainly a piece of work. Instead, he was left looking at the small figure who seemed very alone now on his couch, trying to piece together what had _actually_ just happened between them and feeling like there was a gyroscope in his belly.

“He your ride?” Saul asked after a moment. 

“ _Was_ , I guess,” Jesse had said, looking more lost than usual. 

Saul didn’t know they’d been staying together, and yeah, he’d noticed and begun cataloging the looks between the two of them that seemed to have a weight and subtext way beyond business associates -- but he hadn’t had a scrap of evidence that pushed him to make any assumptions there. 

Walt and Jesse. Now _that_ was some messy weirdness he’d never stopped to consider the implications of. Hell. It did explain some things, at least.

Jesse sighed out something that sounded gravelly and peppered with desert dust, letting his head sag into his hands. An impulse grabbed Saul and he let it.

“You look like you haven’t eaten in a week,” Saul had said. “I know a burger joint with a full bar -- let me buy you dinner and then I’ll drop you off wherever you want.” 

And so Jesse had let him. 

. . .

Three hours later, they were in a back booth, dirty plates and empty glasses stacked between them on the narrow table. 

Jesse had started spilling his guts about “Mr. White” -- and it made his skin crawl that Jesse could only ever call him this -- when he was still sober, so Saul couldn’t feel too bad about suddenly being handed the details of his private life. 

(“You’re, like, my lawyer -- so you can’t tell anybody anything I tell you, right?” Yes, he was very much like Jesse’s lawyer. But he couldn’t think of anyone who would be pressuring him for the details of Jesse Pinkman’s weird, apparently daddy-issue-strewn sex life, anyway -- and so he’d let the kid unburden himself.) 

And he _did_ seem unburdened. 

It wasn’t an on-again off-again thing, Jesse insisted -- and now they were _off._ For sure. It was over. It had been coming for a while -- he could see it happening, and now they wouldn’t be cooking together _or anything else._

Saul had held himself back from stating the obvious: it was for the best. Jesse would see that himself with time, he was sure.

Once the truth was on the table, the tension had drained out of Jesse’s shoulders and he’d slouched out of the too-big hoodie to dig into the dinner Saul was buying him. 

They’d lost track of conversation and started a tab. This was too much new information for Saul to stay sober, so he’d offered to call them both taxis when they were ready to leave. Jesse had just nodded and talked on. 

Once he’d gotten started talking, it was hard to stop him. Not that Saul wanted to. Jesse laughed at his jokes and made jokes that caught the lawyer off guard, had him belting out that unexpected machine gun laugh that he never could control when something was truly funny. They’d both forgotten about Walt. 

Jesse smiled at him with relief and gratitude like Saul had just pulled him off the edge of a cliff -- like the miserable kid in his office a few hours ago was some mirage. He could only imagine what private conversations between Walt and Jesse must’ve been like since the man was about as funny as a subpoena and, from what he’d seen, held a real fascination with making Jesse feel small. 

Yeah, a conversation with Saul probably _would_ be like a breath of fresh air after a few months of dealing with that.

At the end of the night, Saul had paid the tab and they’d gone to stand in the cold in front of the restaurant, Jesse under a friendly arm slung impulsively over his back, leaning his skinny shoulder into Saul’s side. He felt a rush of warmth for the kid and hoped getting close to him like this hadn’t been a mistake. It’d be good for him to have a friend besides Walt who didn’t also come attached to a meth pipe.

“Just call one taxi,” Jesse said when he’d produced a cell phone to call them rides. Saul had looked at the man under his arm. He needed a haircut and several glasses of water, a few more good meals like this one, a comfortable bed and a shower in a bathroom where nobody had ever spit blood into the toilet or dissolved a body in the bathtub. 

“Your place, my place, I don’t care,” Jesse said, as if that clarified something. 

“You’re sure, kid?” 

. . . 

Maybe in another universe, Saul would’ve said no. 

There were a thousand reasons to say no: Jesse’s age, his profession, his extracurricular habits, the possibility that he was only interested because he felt like he needed to pay Saul back for being kind -- and his snarling, dangerous ex who they’d both still have to deal with after that. 

And there were a _million_ reasons to say yes: the ease of their conversation, the way Jesse’s laugh sucked the air right out of his throat, the deep impulse that seemed to flood Saul’s brain with the desire to _take care_ of Jesse in any way that he needed, to do anything to mitigate the disasters that seemed to rain down on him in a constant, torrential downpour. 

So sure: Saul would be happy to be a rebound fuck. Why the hell not. Live a little. Carpe diem and deal with the consequences later. 

In another universe, maybe, Saul would’ve felt like he was taking advantage of the situation. But in this set of circumstances, they were just taking what they wanted from each other -- right? A transaction was all that it was, he assured himself. 

That reasoning was abandoned with their clothes on the floor of Saul’s bedroom before the hour was out.

They seemed to sober up there in the dark -- or maybe just Saul had. Jesse responded to him like he hadn’t felt a tender touch in his entire life. _Maybe he hadn’t_. And so Saul was slow and deliberate, laying strokes of his fingertips and tongue against Jesse’s skin with the precise care of a painter. 

The need to be cared for unfurled out of Jesse until it seemed to radiate from his body -- and Saul didn’t stop to worry about what it meant that he was so eager to satisfy a need, that he didn’t even blink at being a means to an end. 

Jesse’s fingers curled into his hair, against his skin, making Saul feel like he was running out of hands as he pressed and stroked and attempted to satisfy, not tease. 

He nearly lost his tether on reality, though, when Jesse took his hand gently to his face, took a finger gently into his mouth like a promise: slick and hot and so soft. 

He had flipped Jesse over when they’d both plunged so deep into raw want that any more prelude felt cruel. They fit together like they’d done this a hundred times, and that very first time that he fit his hips against Jesse, that he felt his chest lay against that bony back, he was struck by the distinct and abstract realization that this was not a pity fuck, this was not a transaction -- this was something that had nothing to do with Walt. But then Jesse had moaned under him and given a long roll of his hips and the thought was gone. 

Jesse came shuddering, saying Saul’s name once before a surprisingly high and broken sound. 

They smoked in bed afterwards, cut by shadows and neither one shying away from an unexpected closeness. Jesse had stubbed out his cigarette and curled into Saul’s side, pressed his face into Saul’s neck with a continued physical intimacy that Saul would’ve never predicted. 

“That was good,” he’d said. “We should do that again.” 

. . . 

And so for twelve days that felt like a lifetime that fall, _they had._

He wondered if Jesse still thought about it. He _had_ to, didn’t he? 

How could there be a way to look at Saul without remembering that span that felt like a dream, where they’d both smiled more than either man could remember, where Saul had confessed past lives in the dark and Jesse had stated that he knew he wouldn’t see 30 if he kept on in this business with Walt, that he wasn’t sure if he _wanted_ to see 30 anyway. They’d talked about funerals they’d been to and movies they grew up with and dead pets and first loves. 

They’d looked at each other in the morning and liked what they saw, and came back to it at night as if it were something they were always supposed to have done in the first place. 

(And a few times, in the dead of night, Jesse had come up from a dream with a sob that set Saul wide awake, and he had talked about Walt. Saul had let him. He had tried not to dwell on the thought of those hands he hated clamped around Jesse’s wrists, wrenching. He had chewed on his own anger when Jesse apologized for even talking about him -- like Walter White was some supernatural force he shouldn’t give voice to, lest he materialize there in the bedroom.)

. . .

Saul never knew what made Walt change his mind. 

Some bitter part of himself always wondered if Walt only wanted Jesse back, twelve surreal and golden days later, because Saul had taken the time to put the pieces of the kid back together, like some doomed kintsungi project where Jesse smiling and unafraid glimmered with a gilded look he hadn’t had that night when Walt left -- better than before. 

Saul put his disappointment aside, told Jesse to be careful, and let him go without a fight. 

Twelve days, and then it was months before Saul could spend a minute in the same room with the two of them without retreating home to punch the wall and drain a bottle. 

The moment before a mistake hadn’t been that nice night in the bar. It had spanned the twelve days before he let go of something he never thought he could have.  

. . . 

When Walt was done laying into him on Tuesday morning, they’d left quickly. Jesse hadn’t said a word the whole time. He fell into step behind Walt like a well-trained dog -- but in the pause between Walt being out the door and Jesse standing in the doorway, he’d turned. 

The look he’d given Saul was inscrutable. His eyes were clear and exhausted and desperately trying to communicate something. An apology? A plea? 

“You ok?” Saul had said -- unguarded for a moment, as if Walt weren’t two steps away, as if there were anything he could do for the kid if Jesse _wasn’t_ ok. And of fucking course he wasn’t. None of them were -- they were up to their necks. 

But then Jesse had turned and he was gone. 

Saul had kept himself busy after they departed, but the weight of the encounter sank into the back of his brain and sat there, waiting for an idle moment to free itself and wreak havoc. 

When he arrived home after the deliberations that felt endless, he’d kept pushing it off. Jesse was an adult and he’d made his choice. He wasn’t an invalid or a moron. If he wanted to keep cooking meth with Walt and sharing every other piece of himself with that maniac, he could do it. Saul pressed himself to be bitter because it was better than the alternative. 

Each finger of scotch eroded the facade until it was replaced by something entirely different.

_ Oh good: that worn-in misery,  _ he thought. Nothing quite like it. 

Did Jesse really _choose_ anything for himself? Jesse’s parents and then Walt had worked in tandem to convince Jesse that he wasn’t capable enough to make the right choice. And Walt would be sure to nurse any seed of self doubt so thoroughly that it grew and choked out any self esteem Jesse had until the only thing in his life was Walt -- building such a messy network of veins and arteries and capillaries of need between the two of them that separating them might as well be a death sentence for a kid. Even if the guy _was_ poison. 

But their relationship had a clear trajectory and even acknowledging it set Saul’s scotch-addled brain on edge. What a wasteland that relationship must be. 

In twelve days he’d seen the kid change. Why not imagine more? Why not torture himself with the idea of what twelve twelve-day spans might’ve looked like? Why not go ahead and sink deeply into a fantasy world where Jesse Pinkman never had to see Walt again? 

Half a bottle convinced Saul that he _could_ do something. He ought to. He should’ve fought. He hadn’t wanted to be Walt 2.0 -- the guy who tells Jesse he doesn’t know what’s good for himself. But Saul did know it -- the real objective fact, a whole truth: Walt was poison. And so he should’ve fought. Maybe he still could. 

His hand was on the phone and it was past midnight and that was the blissful moment, imbued with hope, before he made a mistake. 

Jesse answered the phone after two rings but said nothing. 

“Jesse? Hey -- kid -- you ok?” 

There was nothing at first, and then he heard a breath, muffled noises, and a very quiet, almost imperceptible “ _hold on._ ”

. . .

It took almost two minutes for Jesse to sneak through the apartment in the dark. He had to ease the door open with impossible slowness to avoid making a sound -- but finally he stepped out onto the landing, wrapping his arms around himself against the cool of the night air. 

“What do you want?” -- and it came out just as angry as he felt. 

“Jesse,” Saul started. He could tell Saul had been drinking just from the quality of his voice and the fact made him even angrier than this unwarranted intrusion. “Are you… ok? I mean -- is he treating you alright?” 

Jesse took a measured breath and wished he’d snagged the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket on the way out. 

“If you ever need anything, y’know, I’m… I’m.” 

“Yeah, Saul, ok.” 

“Yeah.” He sounded so sad -- and Jesse had almost managed to forget that the lawyer could be anything but big and brash and confident. He’d gotten so close to letting himself believe the whole thing had been some shared hallucination -- that the guy had never been nice to him, had wanted to take a chance on him. They sat in silence that only made Jesse angrier. Why had he even called if he had nothing to say now?

“What’s this about?” Jesse demanded, finally. 

“Nothing, Jesse, I was just following up --” 

It pissed him off, the way the man babbled out his name there in private but hadn’t been able to say a word to him face to face.

“Yeah, ok,” Jesse said, interrupting the drunken stream. “Follow up on this: _fuck yourself_.”

Something shifted then in the silence that followed. Maybe Saul sobered up. Who the hell knew. Jesse felt lost -- wrecked -- he’d been fine ten minutes before, just sleeping, immersed in the present. And then here _he_ was, drunk and unraveling things, saying shit Jesse knew he’d never have thought of sober. 

Saul cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, it wasn’t dripping wet with concern and whatever else was motivating him. 

“If you ever need some place to cool off -- no pressure -- just an open door --”

“He knows where you live, asshole.” 

. . . 

Saul had expected excuses and lies and hurried reassurances that everything was fine. 

He’d expected “everything’s cool” and “we’re fine” and “thanks but fuck off, yo.” 

_ He knows where you live _ spoke a thousand volumes -- none of them good. And if he was going to do something for Jesse, he knew then that he’d have to do a whole hell of a lot more than offer an open door. 

Maybe he _could_. And the realization hit him bluntly as he looked around the dark condo. He didn’t have much, but he would be willing to give it all up for Jesse. 

“Look -- I gotta go,” Jesse said. Saul felt like he missed the last step on a flight of stairs -- didn’t want to hang up so quick. He needed to tell him -- needed to say it -- he’d part the goddamn sea if it meant making Jesse safe. He shouldn’t have called drunk because everything sounded so feeble and grasping like this. “Drink some water and go to sleep.” 

“Yeah.” 

It was all he could force out, and then Jesse was gone, the line dead. 

He started following Jesse’s directions immediately, forcing himself up out of the uncomfortable chair and into the kitchen where he pounded two full glasses of water before splashing his face and willing himself to sober up enough to formulate a plan. 

He could get Jesse out of this -- so far away that ABQ would forget about him. And then Saul would deal with the fallout, would watch Walt implode without Jesse. 

The blissful moments before mistakes were done. He would do something right -- something he didn’t profit from -- for once in his long career of swindles and transactions and taking from people. He could do this for Jesse.

. . . 

He tried to sleep, after, lying there and listening to Walt’s shallow breaths. He slept so lightly that it was a miracle he hadn’t woken up -- or maybe he _had_ and this was the genesis of some new mess Jesse would find himself in the middle of. 

But that wasn’t the thing that kept him awake and mentally spiraling for hours after the call. 

It was the fact that Saul still gave a fuck. 

Maybe he _couldn’t_ reach that part of himself sober -- Jesse could understand that, had been there -- but some part of him was still invested. And as mad as it made him to get the call, to hear the familiar voice plunged deeper with booze and exhaustion, dredging up a hundred thousand things that he couldn’t even begin to deal with and acknowledge -- some other dormant part of Jesse was waking up with the thought. 

He had been so resigned to this. He had reworked his life around it, letting Mr. White cut channels into any part of him that wasn’t exactly what Mr. White needed. But someone still existed who wanted to help him. 

And maybe it wasn’t too late to get out. 

When sleep finally did find Jesse again, it brought with it the dreamed smell of exhaust on the highway, the strain of remembering to respond to a fake name, the peaks of mountains in a state Jesse had never visited, and his hand slipping into Saul’s in a place where no one knew what a dangerous mess the two of them were.

 


End file.
